Added critical comments are in blue.For someone who claims to be a
"progressive", we'll soon see that Mr. Rothschild has a fondness
for Rove-style bullying and has created a formula-driven hit piece that seems
more intended to intimidate than to enlighten.

Enough of the 9/11 Conspiracies,
Already

At almost
every progressive gathering where thereís a question and answer period,
someone or other vehemently raises 9/11 and espouses a grand conspiracy
theory.

If you
havenít had the pleasure of enduring these rants, please let me share.

Note the sarcastic, condescending tone. Rothschild is
the one making the grand, sweeping generalization here that anyone who cares
enough about what's going on to question the official story of 9/11 (which is
easily the most significant geopolitical event of our lifetimes) is
automatically a vehement, ranting, unendurable "conspiracy
theorist" who should be shunned and ridiculed whenever possible.

Hereís
what the conspiracists believe:

9/11 was
an inside job.

Absolutely -- critical roles were filled by insiders,
both in government and media. "Outsiders" may also have been
involved.

Members
of the Bush Administration ordered it, not Osama bin Laden.

This is a silly-sounding oversimplification that shows
very little understanding of how the exercise of power is organized in the
world these days. Individuals within the administration were no doubt
involved and had specific roles to play, but they most likely were not the
ones who "ordered it". The network of private interests behind
these attacks extends far beyond the boundaries of our government.

There has been much speculation regarding Bush's odd
behavior while left unprotected in the Florida classroom, the lack of fighter
escort for Air Force One when he finally took off and his choice of
destinations as the day progressed. When word of the second strike came in, a
Marine in company with the Secret Service appropriately signaled, "we're
out of here", but he was overruled and Bush was allowed to sit and
fidget for what seemed like an eternity. It is quite possible that Bush
and/or his handlers either knew that this was not a real threat, or that it
was a very different kind of threat compared to what we were told later in
the day.

There are always patsies involved in
these kinds of false-flag operations -- Arabs in this case.
They may be witting or unwitting, but they are a critical ingredient because
they are the ones being set up to take the blame. Some of the supposed
hijackers may have been on the planes, although the evidence for this is
sketchy at best.

When Davin Coburn, one of the debunker
editors for Popular Mechanics, was asked in a recent interviewhow the government knew all the hijackers
were on the planes, he said that the DNA for all 19 had been found at the
crash sites. When he was then asked how the government had previously
obtained the matching DNA samples that would be necessary to verify
identification, he of course could not answer and instead tried desperately
to change the subject...

It's also highly questionable whether the supposed hijackers
could actually have flown the planes to their targets (hundreds of miles
away, with no help from ground control) with such pinpoint accuracy. Flying a
large commercial aircraft flying at hundreds of miles per hour is not like
sitting in a flight simulator or flying a Cesna. You can't always tell where
you are (at 30,000 feet) just by looking out the window. Even assuming you
manage to end up within sighting distance of your destination, successfully
aiming a large passenger jet at a small target is no easy feat. Remote
control is a much more likely explanation, especially when the flight path of
AA Flight 77 is also considered.

On top of
that, the Twin Towers fell not because of the impact of the airplanes and the
ensuing fires but because the Bush Administration got agents to plant
explosives at the base of those buildings.

There are two problems here. First, we're back to the gratuitously
implausible assertion that the properly constituted government was behind
this in a "business as usual" sort of way. It really helps to do a
study of the history of false-flag attacks to get a better sense of how these
operations are typically carried out, why, and by whom.

Second, The Towers were exploded from the top down.
Rothschild is trying to set up a false comparison to a standard controlled
demolition where gravity is used for most of the work after taking out the
supports at the base of the building.

Building
7, another high-rise at the World Trade Center that fell on 9/11, also came
down by planted explosives.

Controlled demolition is the only
conceivable explanation for such a perfectly executed implosion. Regardless
of any claims the debunkers or NIST may make regarding evidence for specific
types of explosives, the global characteristics of the collapse show multiple
features of controlled demolition, including:

1) It was an almost perfectly vertical
and symmetrical collapse,

2) It fell in only 6.5 seconds, very
near the rate of free-fall,

3) The exterior walls fell inward as
the building came down into its own footprint, causing very little damage to
adjacent buildings,

4) Squib-like bursts of smoke emerge
from the north face as the destruction begins,

While many people have questioned the physical evidence
from the impact, there are other questions about the Pentagon attack that are
perhaps more conclusive and incriminating. The aircraft approaching the
Pentagon made an extraordinary spiral dive, turning 270 degrees and dropping
7000 feet in 2.5 minutes. It was flying almost level, only a few feet from
the ground, as it impacted the first and second floors of the building. These
stunts would certainly be beyond the questionable piloting skills of Hani Hanjour.
And why execute such a difficult maneuver only to be able to strike the one
section of the Pentagon where only hapless construction workers would be
killed and which also happened to be farthest from Rumsfeld's office? Why
take the risk of crashing into the ground before even reaching the building?
Why not just crash into the building from above? And why does the official
NTSB data show the plane (or whatever it is) flying over the building and not
into it?

And the
Pennsylvania plane did not crash as a result of the revolt by the passengers
but was brought down by the military.

The debris field was not continuous. One of the engines
was reportedly found more than a mile away from the primary crash site, and
other debris sites were discovered three, six and eight miles away. This is
inconsistent with a simple crash scenario and implies that some sort of
breakup occurred while the plane was still in the air.

Iím amazed
at how many people give credence to these theories. Everyoneís an engineer.
People who never even took one college science course can now hold forth at
great length on how the buildings at the World Trade Center could not
possibly have collapsed in the way they did

So sarcastic! The people he's talking
about in such disparaging terms are simply fellow citizens trying to share
with others what they've learned from actually doing their own homework and
comparing the credibility of the government version of 9/11 (which ignores or
falsely discredits large amounts of important evidence) to the more
comprehensive independent efforts to explain ALL the evidence and ALL the
data.

And why do they do this? Because they
care about what's happening to America. This is not an idle pastime for the
psychologically disabled. Rothschild suggests that we take HIS word for it
that ALL the independent research into 9/11 is bogus and we shouldn't even
bother to look for ourselves. And, if we do, expect to be ridiculed and
branded as a dreaded "conspiracy theorist". I'll think for myself
and take my chances, thank you.

I believe that it is the civic duty of
every American who cares about their freedom and the future of this country
to spend a little time learning about (1) the history of false flag tactics
and (2) basic physics relating to gravity, fire and the behavior of steel
structures.

and
why the Pentagon could not have been struck by that American Airlines jet.

Problem
is, some of the best engineers in the country have studied these questions
and come up with perfectly logical, scientific explanations for what
happened.

Yes, actually quite a few DIFFERENT explanations. They can't
seem to make up their minds. First the steel melts and then it doesn't. First
they say it was the columns and then they say it was the trusses. First the
truss connections were too weak and gave way, then they became so strong they
pulled the walls in. First they say that nothing could survive the incredible
heat and then they report actual test data from steel recovered from the fire
zones that shows that the steel never reached temperatures over 500 degrees F
-- far below the point where it would even begin to weaken. First they say
that floor truss failure led to a "progressive collapse", then they
report that in post-9/11 fire tests they were not able to re-create failure
even with fires that were hotter and of longer duration than those observed on
9/11...

It is very important to understand that fire temperature
and internal steel temperature are NOT THE SAME. This is why meat
thermometers were invented. Not only does steel take time to heat up, but it
is also a wonderful conductor of heat, meaning that heat is dissipated
quickly throughout the entire framework, making it very difficult to bring
steel to a high temperature in a localized region. These are two of the
reasons why steel-frame high-rise structures NEVER collapse from fire.

The
American Society of Civil Engineers and FEMA conducted an in-depth
investigation of the World Trade Center.

This was an under funded exercise where the
investigators were denied access to ground zero, barred from examining
crucial evidence and not given subpoena power to obtain critical documents.
Fire Engineering Magazine referred to this investigation as a "half-baked
farce".

The team members
included the director of the Structural Engineering Institute of the American
Society of Civil Engineers, the senior fire investigator for the National
Fire Protection Association, professors of fire safety, and leaders of some
of the top building design and engineering firms, including Skidmore Owings
& Merrill in Chicago, Skilling Ward Magnusson Barkshire in Seattle, and
Greenhorne & OíMara in Maryland.

It
concluded that massive structural damage caused by the crashing of the
aircrafts into the buildings, combined with the subsequent fires, ìwere
sufficient to induce the collapse of both structures.î

Like the NIST report that followed, all of the attention
is focused on the alleged "triggering event" where the top section
of the building above the crash zone presumably begins to fall on the lower
floors below. It's supposed to be obvious to anyone why the entire
building would then be destroyed. No explanation for the actual process of
destruction is ever given, beyond the simple suggestion that the structure
was "overwhelmed", and a three-page paper by ASCE authors Bazant
& Zhou based on equations that are irrelevant due to impossible
assumptions.

The National
Institute of Standards and Technology did its own forty-three volume study of
the Twin Towers. ìSome 200 technical experts . . . reviewed tens of thousands
of documents, interviewed more than 1,000 people, reviewed 7,000 segments of
video footage and 7,000 photographs, analyzed 236 pieces of steel

Here we go with thousands of this and
thousands of that. Popular Mechanics does the same thing, as if were supposed
to be hopelessly intimidated by these large numbers of experts, photographs,
etc. Throwing 7000 video segments at something doesn't make it true. And why
can't WE see some of those 7000 video segments?? Someone who knows what he's
talking about will rest his case on the merits of his argument -- not on how
many experts he talked to.

from
the wreckage, [and] performed laboratory tests and sophisticated computer
simulations,î the institute says.

The computer simulations were performed using
undisclosed input values and were based upon admittedly unrealistic
scenarios. Remember that the post-9/11 fire tests did NOT cause floor model
failure and the recovered steel samples showed only relatively low
temperatures.

It also
concluded that a combination of the crash and the subsequent fires brought
the towers down: ìIn each tower, a different combination of impact damage and
heat-weakened structural components contributed to the abrupt structural
collapse.î

Sure, they concluded this, but it's not exactly clear
how or why. And in all their thousands of pages all they have to say about the
actual destruction of the Towers is that "collapse then ensued".
That's it. That's all they say.

Popular
Mechanics, first
in its March 2005 cover story and now in its expanded book, Debunking 9/11
Myths, after interviewing scores of other experts in the engineering
field, takes apart the most popular contentions of the conspiracists. ìIn
every case we examined, the key claims made by conspiracy theorists turned
out to be mistaken, misinterpreted, or deliberately falsified,î the book
says.

What they actually have done is cherry-pick claims that
even most 9/11 researchers have discarded, while ignoring or misrepresenting
the serious questions.

I made a
few calls myself, including to Gene Corley, who conducted the American Society
of Civil Engineers/FEMA study, and to Mete Sozen, structural engineering
professor at Purdue, who was one of the principal authors of ìThe Pentagon
Building Performance Reportî of January 2003, which was done under the
auspices of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Structural
Engineering Institute. I also contacted engineering professors at MIT and
other leading universities in the country, and none of them puts any stock in
the 9/11 conspiracy theories.

These are the same people who have been paid to promote
the "official" story from the very beginning. It was Eduardo Kausel
from MIT who appeared on the Discovery Channel production "Anatomy of
the Collapse" and "proved" his theory for the destruction of
the WTC Towers with a flimsy wooden model that consisted only of four wobbly
sticks representing the corner columns, leaving out the other perimeter
columns with their interconnecting horizontal spandrels, no core structure at
all, and none of the interconnecting floor structures. MIT was also the
source for the equally misleading "science" presented in the NOVA
production "Why the Towers Fell".

In fact,
they view them as a huge waste of time. They are busy trying to figure out
how to prevent buildings from falling in the future.

That sounds nice -- as if they
are the virtuous ones and 9/11 researchers are just wasting everybody's time.
People should realize that individuals like Kevin Ryan, Steven Jones and
others are risking their careers, credibility and livelihood for the sake of
finding out the truth about these important matters. It takes courage to make
a principled commitment to truth based upon one's own convictions --
particularly if your conclusions are going to be politically unpopular. These
individuals should be honored and respected for what they are doing
(regardless of their conclusions), not ridiculed and slandered with cheap
shots the way Mr. Rothschild seems to enjoy so much.

Of
course, any conspiracy theorist worth his or her salt will claim that all
these people are in on the plot.

Not all, but probably some of them. (Another gratuitous
oversimplification.)

And that I am in on it, too.

Perhaps unwittingly.

Get over
it.

Sorry, I'm not convinced yet that I can just go back to
sleep, forget about 9/11 and believe whatever Mr. Rothschild or this
government tells me.

The guru
of the 9/11 conspiracy movement is David Ray Griffin, an emeritus professor
not of engineering but of philosophy and theology at the Claremont School of
Theology. First in The New Pearl Harbor and then in The 9/11 Commission
Report: Omissions and Distortions and now in Christian Faith and the Truth
Behind 9/11, Griffin has peddled his conspiracy theory.

Actually, unlike authors like Michel Chossudovsky or
Webster Tarpley, Griffin doesn't put forward comprehensive theories of his
own, let alone "peddle" any. His skills in philosophy qualify him to
apply logical analysis to a comparison of what is known and documented about
9/11 versus what we've been told about 9/11. One doesn't have to look far
before almost everything we've been told falls apart. He has also provided a
service by compiling the numerous unanswered questions along with the
conclusions of many other researchers. His efforts have provided a
significant overview of this large and complex body of documented fact,
government claims and ongoing speculation.

Heís not alone,
of course. A myriad of websites devote themselves to this subject, and
several films are circulating on it, including Loose Change. Thereís even a
group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which insists ìthe World Trade Center
was almost certainly brought down by controlled demolitions.î Most prominent
among these is Steven E. Jones, professor of physics and astronomy at Brigham
Young University, whose primary field is not engineering but cold fusion,
according to Debunking 9/11 Myths.

Mr. Rothschild and Debunking 9/11 Myths
are apparently choosing to ignore all facts that don't fit their agenda. Dr.
Steven Jones is a not only a professor of Newtonian Mechanics, but his
primary relevant field is forensic archeometry, which involves the application
of advanced physics to the study of "artifacts" recovered from
sites where unknown physical events have taken place. Sophisticated
techniques like the use of photon-induced X-ray emissions are used to do
materials analysis on recovered samples. It is these types of expertise that
have led him to the discovery of materials deposits on WTC steel that match
the chemical signature of the use of thermite and thermate -- incendiaries
and explosives typically used in building demolitions.

Actually they're not. The Left, exemplified by the likes
of Amy Goodman and Noam Chomsky, is notorious for its 9/11 gatekeeping. 9/11
researchers tend to be independently minded and come from both the left and
the right.

for
a couple of understandable reasons. Itís undeniable that Bush has ceaselessly
seized on 9/11 to justify his warmaking abroad and his repressive policies at
home. And then thereís the notorious phrase in a document of the Project for
the New American Century, the fount of neoconservativism, whose members
included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and a
host of other hawks who flew into the Bush Administration. That line, from
the September 2000 study ìRebuilding Americaís Defenses,î argues for
transforming the U.S. military posture into a much more aggressive one, and
for expanding the Pentagonís budget to reach $500 billion a year. The authors
recognized that this transformation would be difficult to achieve quickly
ìabsent some catastrophic and catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor.î

Griffin
and other leftwing conspiracy theorists put the two together, and voila. The
attacks ìwere orchestrated in order to pave the way for launching unprovoked wars
on two countries that provided no threat, whether imminent or long-term, to
the people of the United States,î

Iraq posed no threat and was virtually defenseless when
we attacked with "shock and awe", killing and maiming thousands of
innocent civilians while thoroughly destroying their infrastructure. And for
what? Would this have been allowed without 9/11?

he
writes in Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11. ìThe Administration and
its Pentagon even planned to use 9/11 as a pretext . . . to attack still more
countries.

Is Iran next?

The
U.S. government was planning, therefore, to use the deaths of some 3,000
people (whom itself had killed) to justify wars that would most likely kill and
maim many hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions.î

Who do we bomb after Iran?

Before
taking some of the major conspiracy claims one by one, letís examine how
outlandish the conspiracy theory is on its face.

First, Osama
bin Laden has already claimed responsibility for the attack several times and
boasted of the prowess of the suicide bombers who hijacked those planes. Why
not take him at his word?

Which "bin Laden" is Rothschild talking about?
The bin Laden that spoke directly to the Middle East press immediately after
9/11 denied involvement. It was the bin Laden with the fat nose that showed
up in a VHS tape miraculously found just laying around somewhere in
Afghanistan that claimed responsibility. Most Islamic scholars and
intelligence experts (who aren't working for the government) believe this
tape, as well as most of the ones that came after, is fake.

And
if bin Laden were working in cahoots with the Bush Administration, why was
the President warned on August 6, 2001, in a Presidential daily briefing that
Osama bin Laden was about to attack the United States? Wouldnít that risk
exposing the conspiracy?

The whole idea is to get everybody to believe that the
patsies were independently planning the attack and could carry it out on
their own.

Second,
if the Bush Administration plotters carried out 9/11 to justify attacking
Iraq, why didnít they have Iraqi hijackers do the deed? In actuality, there was
not a single Iraqi hijacker, and Bush propagandists had to do all sorts of
gymnastics to link Iraq to the actual attackers.

You can't just order believable patsies from the supermarket.
Plus the patsies don't necessarily know that they're patsies and they take
time to cultivate. If the plan is to use double-agents to infiltrate an
existing group and take them to a higher level of activity, then you have to
work with the best material available, as long as it's a close enough match
to the target nationality or ethnic group. Saudi's, Iraqi's, whatever. Most
uninformed Americans probably still think Sadam was behind 9/11.

Third, for
this conspiracy to have succeeded, it would have had to have been amazingly
vast: not only the high level members of the Bush Administration (including
the head of the Secret Service, Griffin says in Christian Faith) and the
explosives teams, but also many others.

This is the tired theory that conspiracies never happen
because too many people would have to keep them secret. This goes nowhere and
only serves to comfort those timid souls who are afraid to look at the
evidence. Far fewer witting individuals would be required than Rothschild
imagines.

Professional operatives are in the business of keeping and
protecting secrets. They know that if they don't they'll be dead and out of a
job. Consider how fanatically secretive the current administration has been
about almost everything. Remember Cheney's energy meetings?

Griffin,
in Pearl Harbor, for instance, alleges that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani may have
been involved. Griffin quotes Giuliani telling ABC News, ìWe were operating
out of there [Building 7] when we were told that the World Trade Center was
gonna collapse.î Griffin says Giuliani had no obvious way of knowing that,
and concludes: ìGiulianiís statement provides, therefore, evidence someone,
perhaps he himself, knew something that the firemen in the buildings did not
knowówhich was perhaps that explosives had been placed in the buildings and were
about to be set off.î Is that really evidence? Isnít it much more likely that
the firefighters told the mayor to leave because the fire itself was
jeopardizing the building?

Firefighters know that fire does not cause steel
structures to collapse. It never has and it never will. That's why they
didn't hesitate to enter the Towers to try to rescue people and fight the
fires.

Griffin
also alleges that Larry Silverstein, who leased the World Trade Center
complex, was in on the deal so he could collect the insurance. (This
claimówhich he might as well have called ìThe Jew Cashed Inîódovetails with
the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory popular in the Middle East that the Mossad
blew up the towers and warned the thousands of Jews who would have been
working there to stay home.)

Wow. Is Rothschild making a cheap shot here by
insinuating that Dr. Griffin is somehow anti-Semitic by association?
Silverstein did collect a lot of money under questionable circumstances and
the justifiable sentiments of many Arabs in the Middle East are anti-ZIONIST.
Deliberately confusing anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism simply gives Israel's
right wing extremists a cover story, most recently used to destroy Lebanon
once again and slaughter whomever they choose along the way.

In Pearl
Harbor, Griffin quotes Silverstein in a 2002 PBS documentary recalling a
conversation from the fire department commander on September 11 ìtelling me
that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I
said, ëWeíve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do
is pull it.í And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building
collapse.î Griffin, who writes that Silverstein ìmade almost $500 million in
profit from the collapse of Building 7,î says by ìpull itî Silverstein was
recommending that the building be demolished by explosives. Silverstein has
flat-out denied that.

Of course.

By
ìpulling it,î he has said that he meant giving up on the firefightersí
efforts to save the building.

Two books
later, Griffin removes any ambiguity Silversteinís ìassertion that Building 7
was brought down by explosives, whatever the motive behind it, explains why
and how it collapsed,î Griffin writes in Christian Faith and the Truth Behind
9/11. But Silverstein never made such an assertion, and for Griffin to claim
he did is, to say the least, a distortion.

It's anyone's choice whether or not to believe
Silverstein. He did say pull IT (not them) and according to the FEMA report
(Chapter 5), firefighters had already abandoned WTC7 early in the day due to
lack of water pressure.

He also must have realized (at the time he made the remark)
that the collapse was such an obvious demolition that everyone would know
anyway, just by looking at it.

The
problems with a vast conspiracy theory are obvious. Thereís the likelihood
that someone along the chain would squeal.

This is the "professionals can't keep secrets"
theory again. Many of those who thought they were participating only in the
planning and execution of the multiple terror drills and war games that day
may actually have been unwitting accomplices. And the witting perpetrators no
doubt continue to have many good reasons for staying silent.

Members of
the government have been engaged in far less treasonous plots (such as Bushís
designs on Iran), and whistleblowers have managed to get the information out
to the likes of Seymour Hersh over at The New Yorker. And, on top of that,
weíre supposed to believe that this incompetent Administration, which brought
you Katrina, was somehow able to execute this grand conspiracy?

Sorry, I don't buy the "incompetence" theory
either -- follow the money and see who profits from all of this
"incompetence". The often-repeated claim that there are no 9/11
whistleblowers is a myth that has been assisted by the 9/11 Commission's
pre-determined conclusions and suppression of contradictory evidence and
testimony.

ìThe
government is not sufficiently competent to pull off such conspiracies and
too leaky to keep them secret,î said Richard Clarke, the one-time counterterrorism
czar for Clinton and Bush, in a blurb for Debunking 9/11 Myths. Clarke has
been a harsh critic of Bush, and he was a strong supporter of John Kerry.
Donít you think Clarke would have blown the whistle had he known? And who was
in a better position than he to know?

Richard Clarke is a classic mole who
played a critical role on 9/11. He was the one who first announced -- without
evidence -- "This is Al Qaeda". I don't trust a word he says and
his criticisms of Bush serve only to win credibility among those who
genuinely dislike Bush -- as in the preceding paragraph.

Finally,
in Pearl Harbor, Griffin acknowledges one enormous, unfillable hole in the
conspiracistsí theory: If Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, where did it
go? And where did all sixty-four people on board go? Griffin pathetically
answers: ìOne cannot expect that the revisionists, being independent
researchers with limited budgets and no power to subpoena testimony, could
answer all the questions raised by their alternative scenario.î But that
doesnít stop him from speculating, in a ghoulish way, about one piece of
evidence that contradicts his Flight 77 notion: the phone calls from
conservative Barbara Olson, who was on Flight 77, to her husband, Ted Olson,
Bushís solicitor general. Griffin casts doubt on whether the phone calls
actually happened, noting that Olson ìis very close to the Bush
Administration.î At least in Pearl Harbor, Griffin recognizes the weakness of
this argument. The conspiracy theorists ìstill need to explain, of course,
what became of Barbara Olson, and also whether it is plausible that Ted Olson
would have participated in a plan with that outcome,î he writes. In his
latest book, though, Griffin does not appear bothered in the least, as he
continues to cast doubt on Ted Olsonís account. He has swept Barbara Olson
and sixty-three other people under the rug.

Griffin didn't sweep them under the rug, SOMEBODY ELSE
DID -- he had nothing to do with the disappearance of these people! Griffin
is just trying to make sense out of contradictory and questionable reports.

On to
some of Griffinís most oft-cited questions.

Why did
dust clouds shoot out of the Twin Towers as they fell?

Or, as
Griffin poses it in Pearl Harbor: ìWhat other than explosives could turn
concrete into powder and then eject it horizontally 150 feet or more?î

Corley,
who headed up the investigation for the American Society of Civil Engineers and
FEMA, gives a quick response to that. ìThat is simply the air pressure being
pushed down,î he says. ìOnce the collapse started, then you had roughly a
twenty-story building and roughly a thirty-story building acting as a very
large mass to push everything down. The air pressure gets quite something,
and the windows on the lower floors break, and you see puffs of smoke coming
out of them.î

If he is talking about the high-speed, squib-like
lateral ejections that are seen shooting out from the intact portion of the
structure many floors below the advancing wave of destruction, they include
dust, not just smoke. Where would this dust come from? The ejections are too
energetic and too far down the building to be caused simply by air pressure
from floors above that are presumed to be collapsing. In fact, as the wave of
destruction progresses, it leaves only an expanding slurry of dust and debris
in its wake, with no sign of intact, falling floor slabs that would act like
a collapsing bellows, as Corley suggests.

ìAll
other things being equal, then, the tower that was struck first should have
collapsed first. And yet, although the South Tower was struck seventeen minutes
later than the North Tower, it collapsed twenty-nine minutes earlier,î writes
Griffin in Pearl Harbor. The fact that the South Tower fell first, he
concludes, ìsuggests that the collapse of these buildings was caused by
something other than the fires.î

But all
things werenít equal. ìThe damage done to the second building was more
serious than the damage done to the first,î says Corley.

We can see visible damage to the
perimeter columns, but any claims regarding damage to the interior core
columns and fireproofing are pure speculation that cannot be verified
visually. The shattered fragments of an aluminum airplane that has been
shredded by passing through the perimeter wall are very unlikely to have
enough mass concentration to sever many of the heavy core columns. It's also
important to remember that standard design parameters require that building
structures be able to support five times anticipated static loads.

In fact, Engineering News-Record
reported in 1964 that the specially manufactured high-strength steel
perimeter columns had even greater strength whereby "live loads on these
columns can be increased more than 2000% before failure occurs." From
the book City in the Sky (Times Books, Henry Hold and Company, LLC, 2003,
page 133), we're told that the calculations of the engineers working on the
Tower design showed that ALL the columns on one side could be cut, along with
the two corners and some of the columns on each adjacent side, and the
building would still be strong enough to withstand a 100-mile-per-hour wind!

The National
Institute of Standards and Technology concurs. Its ìFinal Report on the
Collapse of the World Trade Center Towersî notes that ten core columns were
severed in the South Tower,

They don't really know this, even though it's presented
here as a settled fact. But even if this is true, ten core columns is less
than 25% of the 47 columns making up the core structure, leaving the building
well within the five times load design redundancy. And remember, NIST's own
testing on steel samples recovered from the fire zone showed no temperatures
hotter than 500 degrees F, far below what would be required to weaken the
surviving columns. (Remember: fire temperature and steel temperature are not
the same thing.)

whereas only six were severed in
the North. And 20,000 more square feet of insulation was stripped from the trusses
in the South Tower than the North.

This is also a guess, arrived at by firing a shotgun at
a piece of retardant-coated steel in a plywood box. And again it is of little
consequence, given the temperature and duration of the fires and the results
of NIST's floor model fire testing.

The
report ìfound no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting
that the WTC were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives
planted prior to September 11, 2001.î

The NIST report only covers the time frame leading up to
what they call the "triggering event". The evidence for the use of
explosives occurs AFTER this point in time, during the actual destruction of
the building, which is beyond the scope of NIST's investigation, so it is
ignored.

since
the planes did not strike this structure. But the building did sustain damage
from the debris of the Twin Towers. ìOn about a third of the face to the
center and to the bottomóapproximately ten storiesóabout 25 percent of the
depth of the building was scooped out,î Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator
for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, told Popular
Mechanics.

Our government investigators need to get their stories straight.
FEMA's Building Performance Study carried out shortly after 9/11 includes
detailed diagrams of debris distribution from the destruction of the Towers.
WTC7 is beyond the zone impacted by heavy structural materials and was struck
only by lightweight debris, according to FEMA's study. It is not possible for
lightweight debris to scoop out 25% of the depth of the building over ten
floors. There are also no photographs in the public domain that confirm this
claim. But even if it were true, the building would still be within its
design redundancy and this type of damage could not account for the nearly
perfect vertical collapse of the building. Scooping out the structural
support from one side would create an overhanging mass that would cause the
building to tip if it were to fail for some reason.

Whatís
more, the fire in the building lasted for about eight hours, in part because
there were fuel tanks in the basement and on some of the floors. ìThe
building was designed for a fire duration of no more than about three hours,î
says Corley. ìEight hours was way more than what that building was designed
for.î (Corley, by the way, also headed up the investigation of the Murrah
Buildingís collapse in Oklahoma City.)

Fuel oil is just another hydrocarbon that burns no
hotter than paper or office furniture. Many steel frame buildings have become
true towering infernos engulfed by emergent flames and have burned for 24
hours and longer, but the steel framework never fails. High-rise structures
would NEVER be built out of steel if they were known to collapse from fire,
especially after burning for ONLY THREE HOURS!

The
National Institute of Standards and Technology is still studying the collapse
of Building 7, but its initial report says: ìNIST has seen no evidence that
the collapse of WTC 7 was caused by bombs, missiles, or controlled
demolition.î

Of course.

What
about the Pentagon?

Conspiracy
theorists will bend your ear explaining that the American Airlines Boeing 757
couldnít possibly have made such a small hole in the Pentagon. Griffin in
Pearl Harbor: ìThe orifice created by the impact . . . was at most eighteen
feet in diameter. Is it not absurd to suggest that a Boeing 757 created and
then disappeared into such a small hole? . . . Can anyone seriously believe
that a 125-foot-wide airplane created and then went inside a hole less than
twenty-feet wide?î

First of
all, the hole was actually ninety feet wide, according to the ìPentagon
Building Performance Reportî of January 2003, which the American Society of
Civil Engineers and the Structural Engineering Institute put out. And
Professor Sozen of Purdue, one of the authors of that report, has an
explanation.

ìThe
reinforced columns of the Pentagon destroyed the wings,î says Sozen. ìThatís
why the hole is smaller. It had to be smaller.î Since working on that report,
Sozen has designed simulations at Purdue, and his results correspond with
what happened to Flight 77, he says. Sozen, who identifies himself as a
progressive, says it is ìridiculous to denyî that the American Airlines plane
hit the Pentagon. And, he adds, if Flight 77 didnít hit the Pentagon, where
did it go and ìwhat happened to the people in that planeî?

But we
know what happened to them. They died at the Pentagon. ìAll but five of the
189 people who died on the aircraft and in the Pentagon were later identified
through DNA testing,î according to Debunking 9/11 Myths.

These issues are a distraction from the more important
questions mentioned earlier regarding the piloting skills necessary for the
almost impossible spiral dive, and the odd choice to strike the building
where it was under construction, far from Rumsfeld's office, requiring
another difficult and very risky maneuver.

Griffin
and many other conspiracists allege that Flight 93, which crashed in
Pennsylvania, was brought down not by the passengers struggling with the
hijackers but by a U.S. missile. But we know from cell phone conversations
that passengers on board that plane planned on confronting the hijackers.
And, as Debunking 9/11 Myths notes, ìa Cleveland air traffic controller
assigned to Flight 93 heard signs of a struggle in the cockpit, followed
shortly by screaming.î

Tapes of
the conversations at the northeast regional headquarters for the North
American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) confirm this, as Michael Bronner
has shown in his August article for Vanity Fair entitled ì9/11 Live: The
NORAD Tapes.î Major Kevin Nasypany was the facilityís mission-crew commander
that day, and the tapes show him frantically trying to figure what was going
on and whether he had orders to shoot Flight 93 down.

ìGimme the
call sign,î he says at 10:07. ìGimme the whole nine yards. . . . Letís get
some info, real quick. They got a bomb?î

But, as
Bronner reports, by then ìeveryone on board is already dead. Following the passengersí
counterattack, the plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m.î

The man
who headed up the crash site investigation there was Matthew McCormick, a
thirty-three-year veteran at the National Transportation Safety Board. ìFrom
my investigation there was no pre-impact stress to the airplane,î he told the
Debunking authors.

How does he explain the discontinuous debris field with
an engine showing up so far from the crash site?

and the
Pentagon and FAA appear to have not been fully truthful and forthcoming about
what happened that day. Not every riddle that Griffin and other conspiracists
pose has a ready answer. But almost all of their major assertions are
baseless.

Saying so doesn't make it so. And this article didn't even
mention some of the most important issues, like the other demolition features
of the WTC destruction (in addition to the discovery of thermite -- symmetry
and pulverization, for example), the war games on 9/11, insider trading, the
lack of military response, no reprimands or firings, pre-9/11 warnings to
selected individuals, stonewalling the investigation and appointing insiders
to control it, improper destruction of evidence from Ground Zero, destruction
of flight controller depositions, other missing evidence, etc.

And their
own theories have such gigantic holes and require such monumental leaps of logic
that they discredit themselves.

This, in fact, more accurately
describes the government's claims.

At
bottom, the 9/11 conspiracy theories are profoundly irrational and
unscientific.

Some are, but SOME AREN'T. This is another sweeping,
baseless generalization. And what about the government's conspiracy theory?
That's the one with the guy in the cave and his boxcutter gang...

It
is more than passing strange that progressives, who so revere science on such
issues as tobacco, stem cells, evolution, and global warming, are so willing
to abandon science and give in to fantasy on the subject of 9/11.

This is degenerating into Mr. Rothschild's personal opinions,
which are either hopelessly uninformed or deliberately fraudulent.